Terran Strategies
There are several viable Terran strategies possible and you may need to adapt yours depending on how both your enemies and allies are playing. The most important thing to keep in mind in Zerg Hex is: * A zerg starts with a low economy, it takes time to build it up but it grows exponentially. The more aggressive the zerg is early the longer its eco will stay low. * A zerg economy will always be greater than the one from a terran: do not try to beat a zerg at this game. * Unlike terrans, zerg can share resources. In other words they have easier time to combine their income unlike terrans * The key is cooperation: a zerg cannot focus 3 terran players at a time. As a result, at least one and eventually two terrans should be free enough to expand and/or push. Take advantage of a player being focused to be aggressive and damage the zerg. The best advise we can give to terrans: do not try to beat zerg in economy and do not wait elites to push. Openers & Early Game 1) The aggressive opener - '''This is arguably the strongest overall opener for terran. # Move your marines forward up to behind the lake: your marines are strong enough to fight against the starting non-upgraded zerg spawners units (if upgraded, you will lack firepower) # Get all three lowground gas. # Have your two given Builder build two walls on the two paths to protect the 2 outer Refineries. # Make your Battery patrol between your marines and your generator # Spam Fruit Farms. Switch to sheep farms after 2~3 fruit farms if you are focused. # Build one Reaper From this point: it entirely depends on how focused you are and how good the zerg is. If the zerg upgrades its spawners, you will need your reaper on the front to help your marines. If not, you can send it to destroy the rocks at your base to unlock the pocket base. The next objective is to have 4 reapers in total and only then produce marines (3 marines for each two generator levels) and build 2 or 3 saturated fruit farms (i.e. a fruit farm with 3 sheep farms). '''If you are not focused: # Send your reapers to take down the rocks: once they are taken they can help to take the 3rd gas at the front and then free the two gases owned by the zerg at each side of your base # Build one line of Walls to prevent the zerg to attack from all sides # Build an Armory forward and research Shattering Laser as soon as possible (~8min) # Have 1 or 2 more batteries to distribute the energy (one for each 5 generator levels) If your Armory is forward enough, it should provide enough bonus range for your marines to take down the first Spine without entering its range. You may want to have 3 Shock Troopers to take help to take down the spines and spawners (3 Instant Discharge + 2 regular shots are enough to take down a spine). Now you should be relatively safe thanks to Shattering Laser as long as you are keeping a healthy marine count and production. The next steps are: * Taking down the zerg Nests and Mineral Extractors as fast as possible * Get Conservation L1 for your marines Doing so will reduce the map control of the zerg as well as their economy. The Nest also provides a Buggo giving you extra gas income. A Good benchmark is (unless focused) being able to take down the mineral extractors before or at the 14 minute mark which should be around the beginning of the middle game. Focused spin: Ultimately the objective is the same. The difference if you are focused is you will have harder time to achieve it. When you are focused, what is important to keep in mind is: * Make sure you stay out long enough for your Refineries to pay off (1 minute) * Do not build sheep farms. Sheep farms are about half as cost effective as fruit farms. While they have the added benefit of fitting inside your base, if you are pushed back up the ramp, the top priority is to get shattering laser and push down instead of farming, and you'll need all the gas you have. * Put the Armory either behind the lake or if the risk of being overwhelmed is too much inside your base * Do not lose any units: do not hesitate to retreat if necessary When you are too focused and cannot manage to get out and the zerg keeps coming at you as soon as you try to go out instead of focusing another of your ally, you have only one role: stay alive. Get your economy up and running, keep a healthy amount of marines and prepare yourself to push out and establish the lowground if the attention of the zerg switches, or push out if the zerg f2'd to defend someone else's push. What is important here is to keep the zerg busy: if the zerg is focusing you it means your allies are having easier time and can punish him. Eventually they will be able to help you while having damaged the zerg enough. The biggest damage you can do to zerg while being focused is forcing him to keep the focus on yourself. 2) Anti-cheese - '''This is a twist on the econ opener, except you simply get a Shock Trooper after your 4th unit instead of a reaper. Use this strategy when you are not sure the Zerg isn't going to do some sort of cheese (Massing units, Firelings, Spines, Drone rush, etc..). '''3) Kill your teammates opener - Do not expand or expand and take only 1 gas and put down Walls in order to defend your base. This strategy is called that way because what you are doing is: * Playing the sheep: the zerg will take you as a noob/harmless and focus on your teammates instead * Greatly limiting your economy which means negligible support to your teammates or no way to punish the zerg when he is focusing your teammates Mid Game When entering the mid game you should have: * A healthy amount of upgraded marines: 30-40 marines with shattering + conservation L1 or close to have it * A healthy economy: 2 or 3 saturated fruit farms and 3-4 gases * Taken down the zerg first base From that point, what is left to do is: * Help to take down the first zerg bases of your teammates if they are not already taken down (the objective being to destroy the Mineral Extractors to slow down the zerg economy) * Putting a Tech Lab next to your generator: it will be necessary to provides the shield ability, either to help you to get out of a nasty situation, support in energy or take down the Large Spines * Get the Generator at the level 15 in order to have enough energy to both sustain your army and save enough for providing energy to your Tech Lab * Continue to produce marines until having 50-80 marines * Get Penetrating Laser The main objective is to take down the Large Spines in order to reduce the zerg map control and clear the path to the Hives. If you manage to clear the large spines on each side before the 20 minutes mark, you have already won in all but the scenario in which the zerg has ultras/brutas on the way. The zerg economy will be quite limited and you should have a quite powerful force. End Game The end game is probably the sketchiest part of the strategy as it depends greatly as how the game went. Clearing the zerg base is likely to have drained you: not much energy and the production should start to be very limited. The biggest risk in this situation is the zerg to manage to get Ultralisk or Brutalisk tech for which you will have trouble. But don't panic, there are several solutions: * You should have a force strong enough to deal with a small number of Ultralisks or Brutalisks. They will not have speed or damage upgrades so even though they will manage to kill a few marines, it should be enough to stay alive. If they have been massed together, a Force Field on them will nullify their armor making them easy targets. * Zerg has very little resources: he will not be able to focus all the players allow them to push and very little map control The best way to go in this situation is just to manage to regroup yourself as terrans and do one final big push. If you are too limited in energy, you can try to just snipe the large spines and the ultralisks/brutalisks spawners: they are expansive and take time to complete so that can give you enough breathing room to power up enough to finish the zerg. Defensive Techniques/Strategies 1-The Suicide Camp This strategy is one of the noob strategies which requires a massive amount of vespene to accomplish, something that you won't get if you're backed up the ramp. This strategy is about utilizing every repair and health upgrade for your front gates, as well as using a large amount of Italis or Tanks. The idea is that you want to get as much vespene as much as possible and mass a huge amount of farms and converters. You want all the minerals you get to be converted into vespene and then upgrade your wall/gates enough to survive a Omegalisk. After you get your maxed Wall upgrades, you want to just sit behind your wall, putting a Tech Lab at the back with a Construction Yard. You'll stack a massive amount of builders on the Walls to repair and a Shock Trooper or two to debuff all incoming enemies. Snipe Nests with Tanks. Unless the zerg is a total noob, you will not have enough gas to accomplish anything meaningful before the zerg destroys you, as not having access to the lowground gas cripples your economy. See Turtling for details .... seriously though, use this as a last resort only (unless your a troll). 2-Anti-Strikeling (outdated as Strikeling spawners are capped at 30 pieces) Some Zerg now mass 30 Strikeling Spawners around midgame. The main reason why is because Strikelings have the best burst damage on the Hex for cheap, making it very dangerous to target fire Large Spines, and they costs the least supply so it's a cheap way to increase income. The best way to take out a large mass of Strikelings are shatter laser marines and/or shock troopers. When dealing with mass Strikelings, since they have 1 hp, t1 marines are more than enough. Still valid: When you have just upgraded to Elite Marines, add some Shock Troopers or Standard Marines to the ball. A strikeling mass can kill Elite Marines in low numbers, simply because they don't shoot enough. 3-The Hole The hole is easy to do and cheap. What you need to do is make a 1x2 hole in your wall (2x2 for bigger zergs). You should try to make your walls be two walls thick if you are to rely on it. All the zerg will funnel through that hole upon seeing an enemy attacking them. Keep in mind, as long as you have a way to your soldiers, the Zerg Units will not attack the walls unless told to. This make the zerg concentrated on one path, so you don't have to split your forces to maybe overdefend one side and underdefend the other. Shock troopers' splash would also become actually useful. 4-Hive Walls Hive Walls, or Hiving. Hiving is when you make multiple copies of "Hole" close by so they intersect, making a weird dot like pattern. The reason why this is viable is because when zergs turn, it decreases the unit's acceleration. Hiving will make the zergs turn a huge amount of times, and add shock troopers with Paralyzing Shock and you have a very efficient defense. More used for the fun than it being actually useful. 5-Maze Mazing in this game is a hit or miss, depending on how heavily the Zerg is attacking the Terrans. Too much eco for the Zerg and it will only waste your valuable time. All it requires is for the zerg to be able to target your soldiers at the end of a maze of walls. That's pretty much it. In times of need, you can stick a random Builder at the end of the maze and put it on "hold position". The zerg path finding is to go past the Builder and go for your army, so they just shimmy around, unable to go past it. 6-General tips At the start of the game, reapers are the most cost effective defensive unit. Once you get shattering laser, marines are the most cost effective defensive unit. Once primal roaches are out, t2 marines and italis are the most cost effective defensive units, depending on whether you spent gas for conservation l2 or minerals for generator. Once brutalisks are out, only italis and t3 marines matter. Gun turrets will drain your energy fast, but can be used as a stopgap if you don't have the gas for marine upgrades and you have the gun turret upgrade. Attack Techniques Early game 1) Phalanx The "Phalanx" is the idea of placing Marines across the front to kill most things and 3-4 Shock Troopers charged in the back to focus down threatening targets. Keep your batteries on a hotkey and whenever you've advanced a little further, select them and then add another rally point closer to your frontline. It requires a lot of attention to get this to work until your used to it, but it is very reliable once mastered. You should use the Shock Troopers to snipe the Spine Crawlers and hydralisks and the Marines to overdrive repeatedly to help push. The batteries are your supply line, keep 'em alive, because should they die, then you are retreating to avoid running out of energy, giving the Zerg more time. 2) Early Reaper push If you want to start pushing super early (before 7-8 minutes) then you are going to have to use Reapers as well. This is because they benefit from no energy and effectively take down structures. The minimum necessary to push in this way is 4 Marines, 1 Battery, 2 Shockies, 6 reapers and Generator lvl 2 (3 makes a huge difference). Use 2 waves of the Shockies to kill the first spine and then move in. Try to focus the units with the Marines, buildings with Reapers and priority targets with the Shockies. Don't forget to Eco whilst microing! An alternative approach to the above is to use only reapers. Use the c ability to leap near a spine and focus fire it. Usually the spine will go down given a sufficent amount of reapers without losing much. Mid/Late game 1) Mass t1 - In this build you simply build a massive amount of t1 marines once you have a decent established economy. Ideally, you should be pushing with this at 13-18 mins. Utilize this strategy when it is clear that the zerg is getting a massive amount of econ (likely rushing bruta). The way to stop this is to prevent them from getting there. Spend all your gas on farms up to about 12 mins into the game, then cut off all eco spending and go fully into mass marines, generator upgrades, and marine upgrades. After that, you just pump as many marines as you can until you have a good-sized army (50-70+), about 15~20 level generator, shatter laser, penetrating laser and l1 conservation, and around 5~10 charges in your tech lab for reinforcements. 2) Rush elites - In this build you try and get elite marines asap usually around 18-25 mins. Once you have an army (20+) and the zerg does not have ultra/bruta it is over. Utilize this strategy when the zerg is obviously going spawner crazy and does not have a lot of income. Before a mass marine push of any kind, you generally want to build your tech lab a few minutes before and upgrade your generator to around 20+ that way you can sustain your army. Obviously, you are also going to need shatter and, overcharge. The exact amount of econ you can afford in any kind of build really comes down to the number of geysers you have, how early you upgrade them, if you have a buggo, etc. Of course, all of these timings will be variable depending on how the zerg is playing, what your teammates are doing, etc... Don't focus too much on the timings and amount of farms you need; just focus on the idea and play adaptive. There are several variations on mass marine builds as well which determine how invested you want to be in your push. Sometimes you might choose a mass t1 push without getting any cow farms. This is one of the variations that is an all-in type push (if you fail you generally lose). Coordinate with your teammates on when you want to push and play accordingly. 3) Hive snipe - This is generally a troll strategy or a last resort when the zerg is not attacking you at all. Use shock troopers to kill all the big snipes on one side of the zergs hive. Next, scan the zerg's hive and use the shock trooper Instant Discharge ability as many times as it takes to destroy the hive. 32 shots is enough to kill the hive. Big Spine tips The Big Spines on the low ground are easier to kill than most Terrans think, as long as you don't do something stupid. Stupid things include: Attacking with Reapers, attacking with less than 15 marines, not using buffs (Techlab Bubble and Overcharge), going in and out indecisively (without waiting for your units to heal before commit), pushing into one when there are so many Zergs coming your barely holding anyways (especially strikelings) As for how you should do it: Target spines that have spawners behind them, so that you can actually get meaningful damage (don't forget about the sides!), start a distance away and move command under it, cast the bubble at where your units are going to be, then tell the marines to attack it and cast overcharge. You should lose a max of 15 marines if there's not a lot of zerg units. As for the Spines outside the Zerg base, station your units diagonally away from the ramp, scan the high ground, bubbe, move next to the Ramp and overcharge. Like this you only have to deal with 1 of the Spines at a time. Also Elite Marines make quick work of these, even without a bubble. Firebat Push If you were to push post 30 minutes, elites alone are usually not enough. You want some firebats at the front, not to do any damage, but just to tank the large spines. That late into the game, actually letting a bruta or ultra to attack would more often than not oneshot your units, making them even more dangerous than the large spines, so you cannot focus on the spines and just facetank the units. So your marines would take forever to kill the spines in addition to all the spawns, which would kill a lot of your marines if you don't have firebats tanking. Note: do not overmake firebats, once ultras/brutas are out, they don't actually do much other than waste your gas and die. They just die slower than marines and When all else fails If you get pushed back multiple times and are unable to push out, then this is the strategy for you. Hide in your base - This is really a strategy for noobs, trolls or for when the Zerg is focusing you hard enough that you can only depend on your teammates to win the game for you. # Build lots of farms to provide minerals for generator upgrades. # Build a construction yard at the top of your ramp and research unified armor. # Build a tech lab and charge it up. Make sure you get as many generator upgrades as possible. # Simply support your allies with power fields and energy warps when needed. # If it gets late enough in the game and you are still alive then refer to the turtling strategies and you can potentially ion. Category:Terran Category:Terran Strategy Category:Gameplay